Categories

Archives

This can be perplexing terrain, in which it’s not at all clear that everyone is speaking the same language, although they might be using the same words. In popular usage, “gender” is often simply a synonym for “sex”, and it’s unquestioned that “woman” and “female”, and “man” and “male” are naturally and irrevocably paired. (This could be called the essentialist account, or “gender is in one’s pants”.) Essentialism comes in slightly more sophisticated variants too, and one current proponent is Simon Baron-Cohen, Professor of Developmental Psychopathology at the University of Cambridge, who has written extensively on what he calls “the essential difference”, claiming that the male brain is inherently systematising and the female brain inherently empathising, leading to a natural division of roles on the basis of a physical difference. (Baron-Cohen does allow that “not all men have the male brain, and not all women have the female brain”, but the fact that “systematising” roles occupied by men tend to be well-paid and prestigious, while “empathising” ones performed by women are less valuable or even entirely unpaid, is regarded as an unfortunate coincidence.)

Another day, another article about a child who is being taught that she is the opposite sex because she likes the wrong things. May 18th’s victim of gender roles is Shanice/Shane, who is a girl who likes “boys’ things,” and is therefore being transitioned to a boy. The 1950s-style sexism in this article is enough to make me vomit. I swear, somebody somewhere is being paid to churn out these articles daily and they’re required to include as many sex stereotypes as possible. It’s all part of the public relations campaign for traditional gender roles and expensive surgeries.

To be of woman born is a universal experience, yet women themselves remain a diffuse, fractured group. “What is a woman, anyway?” is still considered a deep, meaningful question to ask. The polite answer is, of course, “whatever anyone wants it to be”. More than that would close off the vessel, seal the hole, glue back together the broken shell. There’s a sense in which women are simply not meant to be whole. We need to be in pieces so that men can survive intact.

The main thing I wish were different about the therapy I received before and during my transition is I wish my therapists had been trauma competent.

I was in therapy right after my college rape. I was in therapy for the many years I was wondering if I was some kind of trans. I was in therapy when I decided I was trans and needed to get my letters for hormones and surgery.

All three therapists knew about my college rape. All three therapists knew about my stressful childhood in a home with daily violence. The second two therapists knew about me going through an experience of being virally hated on on the internet. Looking back, knowing about dissociative states, it’s crystal clear that was a traumatic experience I had classic trauma reactions to- dissociation, depression, anxiety, avoidance. We talked over my rape. We talked over my childhood. We talked over a pack of strangers hating me on the internet. We talked and talked and talked.

Recently an arsonist set fire to Canada’s only sex change clinic, located in Montreal, and caused $700,000 worth of damage. Pro-trans journalists speculated that it was a hate crime and that it was evidence of transphobia. It was immediately obvious to me that the person who set this fire was a former patient. Gender critical feminists aren’t setting fire to surgery clinics, and neither are right-wing conservatives. We simply don’t believe that men are women, but we have no desire to physically harm anyone or damage property because of our beliefs. The people who tend to terrorize others and cause trouble are male-to-female transsexuals—the autogynephile type.

Let us be clear: HB2 cannot be compared to the injustice of Jim Crow. In fact, it is insulting to liken African Americans’ continuing struggle for equality in America to the liberals’ attempt to alter society’s accepted norms.

Recently, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch compared HB2 to Jim Crow. Jim Crow laws were put into place to keep an entire race positioned as second-class citizens. HB2 simply says that men and women should use the restroom of their biological sex in government buildings and schools. This comparison is highly offensive and utterly disrespectful to those families and individuals who have shed blood and lost lives to advance the cause of civil rights. I take this as a personal slap in the face because I was an active participant in the civil rights movement.